TOP AI & DEEP TECH STARTUP Pitch Competition at Web Summit

About

Invite-only pitch competition for early-stage AI and DeepTech startups

A Bay Area–caliber room in Lisbon during Web Summit. Every seat is hand-picked: standout pre-seed and seed AI founders, top-tier VCs, and frontier tech operators.

APPLICATION FORM FOR STARTUPS: https://forms.gle/oULUuvfJBqHxwJkUA

🏆 Prizes

Winner: access to the Atlassian for Startups package (subject to eligibility)

All finalists: 90% off one year of HubSpot, plus access to HubSpot’s fundraising kit

JURY

Anand Chandrasekaran — Managing Partner @ Celesta Capital

Deep tech VC with $1.1B AUM and 100+ early-stage investments, specializing in semiconductors and AI infrastructure

Ex-Partner at General Catalyst

Experienced operator: co-founder of Crescendo AI, ex-Meta, ex-Yahoo, and former CPO of Airtel and Snapdeal

Ben Joffe — Senior Partner @ SOSV

Global VC firm focused on early-stage deep tech

$1.5B+ AUM

Philip Braddock — Head of Startups @ Atlassian

Leads Atlassian for Startups, the program that has onboarded 5,000+ startups globally since launching in June 2024

Partners with 215+ VCs, accelerators and incubators, including Y Combinator, 20VC and a16z

Roman Bunin — AI Adoption Lead @ Nebius

Nasdaq-listed AI infrastructure company building full-stack AI cloud for model developers and enterprises

Leads AI adoption across Nebius; previously Head of Data at Nebius Group

Gonçalo Gaiolas — CPO @ DeepL

Leads product at DeepL, driving its expansion into voice and next-generation Language AI

Previously CPTO at SoSafe, where he pioneered a new category in human risk management; 10 years at OutSystems helping pioneer low-code

Tilman Ehrbeck: Co-founder & Managing Partner @ Flourish Ventures

Global fintech VC with ~100 startups backed including Chime, Neon, Unit and Kin

$850M AUM; previously 10+ years as Partner at McKinsey and CEO of CGAP (World Bank–hosted)

Igor Ryabenkiy — Managing Partner @ AltaIR Capital, Founder @ Altalab

400+ portfolio companies, 10+ unicorns backed, primarily at seed stage

Notable investments include Miro, Deel, OpenWeb, Turing

$600M AUM

Stepan Gershuni — Investor @ cyber•Fund

AI-native VC fund from the Lido and P2P.org co-founders

Serial web3 founder (ex-Bitfury); author of a AI Telegram channel with 63k+ subscribers

More jury members and speakers to be announced. Space is limited and by application only.

HOSTED BY

Sobremesa Events, the agency curating executive events for B2B leadgen in any city in the world. We are the team behind top events at SF Tech Week and Web Summit — past guests have included senior leaders from Waymo, OpenAI, Zipline, and Khosla Ventures.

PARTNERS AND SPONSORS

Media partner

psy. agency is LLM visibility-first global PR & comms for founders, tech companies & VCs — from day one to IPO.

Ecosystem and venue partnerUnicorn Factory Lisboa is a powerhouse startup ecosystem transforming Lisbon into the innovation capital of Europe. It has supported over 1,100 fast-growing companies and supercharged over 350 startups and scaleups annually by plugging them into an elite global network of over 160 venture capital firms. Its explosive impact caught world attention, landing the #24 spot in the Financial Times' Europe's Leading Start-up Hubs 2026 ranking.

Official page and registration: lu.ma/5e8xyngj